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Mob rule
The All is the name for the collective mass of a group of people. To people infected with groupthink the All is an object of worshipful devotion and becoming and remaining a member of the All is all-important to them. Ochlocracy is an extreme form of Groupthink in which people cease to think or act rationally as they merge into the All which then takes on a life of its own. Ochlocracy (Greek for mob rule) is the rule of by mob or a mass of people, or, the of legitimate authorities. As a pejorative for , it is akin to the Latin phrases mobile vulgus, meaning "the fickle ", from which the English term "mob" originally was derived in the . Ochlocracy is synonymous in meaning and usage to the modern, informal term " ", which arose in the 18th century as a colloquial neologism. Gustave Le Bon From held that crowds existed in three stages: submergence, contagion, and suggestion. *During submergence, the individuals in the crowd lose their sense of individual self and personal responsibility. This is quite heavily induced by the anonymity of the crowd. *Contagion refers to the propensity for individuals in a crowd to unquestioningly follow the predominant ideas and emotions of the crowd. In Le Bon's view, this effect is capable of spreading between "submerged" individuals much like a disease. *Suggestion refers to the period in which the ideas and emotions of the crowd are primarily drawn from a shared racial unconscious. This behavior comes from an archaic shared unconscious and is therefore uncivilized in nature. It is limited by the moral and cognitive abilities of the least capable members. Le Bon believed that crowds could be a powerful force only for destruction. Additionally, Le Bon and others have indicated that crowd members feel a lessened sense of legal culpability, due to the difficulty in prosecuting individual members of a mob. Terminology appears to have coined the term in his 2nd century BC work (6.4.6). He uses it to name the "pathological" version of popular rule—in opposition to the good version, which he refers to as democracy. There are numerous mentions of the word "ochlos" in the (where "ochlos" refers to anything from "mob", "populace", to "armed guard"), as well as in , a Jewish commentary on the Bible. The word is recorded in English since 1584, derived from the ochlocratie (1568), which stems from the original Greek okhlokratia, from okhlos ("mob") and kratos (meaning "rule, power, strength"). Ancient Greek political thinkers regarded ochlocracy as one of the three "bad" forms of government ( , , and ochlocracy) as opposed to the three "good" forms of government ( , , and ). They distinguished "good" and "bad" according to whether the government form would act in the interest of the whole community ("good") or in the exclusive interests of a group or individual at the expense of justice ("bad"). This (Polybian) terminology for forms of state in ancient Greek philosophy has become customary. termed democracy as " " (sometimes translated as " ", which confusingly is used by other Aristotle-translators for " ", instead) while giving the name of "democracy" to ochlocracy. An "ochlocrat" is one who is an advocate or partisan of ochlocracy. It also may be used as an adjective ("ochlocratic" or "ochlocratical"). The threat of "mob rule" to a is restrained by ensuring that the protects or individuals against short-term or . Although considering how laws in a democracy are established or repealed by the majority, the protection of minorities by rule of law is questionable. Some authors, like Bosnian political theoretician Hasanović, connect the emergence of ochlocracy in democratic societies with the decadence of democracy in where "the democratic role of the people has been reduced mainly to the electoral process". Mobs in history Historians often comment on mob rule as a factor in the and its maintenance, as the city of itself was large—between 100,000 and 250,000 citizens—while the and even was very small by comparison to the citizenry. Lapses in this control often led to loss of official power (and often enough, the lives of the officials)—most notably in the reign of when unwisely used the against a mob which had come to call for his head. As historian relates it: to sally forth and disperse the seditious multitude. The multitude fled with precipitation towards the city; several were slain, and many more were trampled to death; but when the cavalry entered the streets their pursuit was checked by a shower of stones and darts from the roofs and windows of the houses. The footguards, who had long been jealous of the prerogatives and insolence of the Praetorian cavalry, embraced the party of the people. The tumult became a regular engagement and threatened a general massacre. The Praetorians at length gave way, oppressed with numbers; and the tide of popular fury returned with redoubled violence against the gates of the palace, where Commodus lay dissolved in luxury, and alone unconscious of the ...Commodus started from his dream of pleasure and commanded that the head of Cleander should be thrown out to the people. The desired spectacle instantly appeased the tumult...}} This followed a previous incident in which the had demanded and received the death of , the prior administrator. The mob thus realized that it had every chance of success. The in during the 1690s, in which the unified belief of the townspeople overpowered the logic of the law, also has been cited as an example of mob rule. In 1837 wrote about and "the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country—the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice". Mob violence played a prominent role in the early history of the . Examples include the , the , the , the , the murder of , and the . In , gave an address demanding military action against "mobocrats". References Category:Psychology